Category: Suresh Krishna

People are people. There are no right people and wrong people. You just either relate to people or you don’t.

We met an entrepreneur the other day who leads a large organization. He has about 15 people reporting to him. Over the last couple of years that we have known this entrepreneur, he has forever been complaining about the lack of ownership among his leadership team. He is obsessing over how to sack the “laggards” among his direct reports – but, ironically, he hasn’t been able to do anything in that direction. Every time we meet him though, he only keeps complaining, fretting and fuming about his people. In a way, we sense so much negativity emanating from him – it makes me wonder whether he has a problem with his people of if he is the problem?

Contrast this with what Suresh Krishna, the CMD of Sundram Fasteners, shared with me when I met him recently for my Sunday Blog Series – “The Happiness Road”: “There are no right or wrong people. There are just people. And you have to take them along. This ability to take everyone along is what leadership is all about!”

I totally agree with Krishna. Seriously, whether it is in business, at work, or in family, don’t obsess over people and their behaviors. There are no right or wrong people. Everybody is right in their own way. In fact people do whatever they do because they believe what they are doing is right from where they are seeing it. To be sure, even you – or I – do things only from that perspective. So, there is no point in vexing over people like our entrepreneur-friend has been doing. You either relate to someone or you don’t. And people either relate to you or they don’t. And it is only when two people continue to relate to each other that they (can) work with or live with each other. It is, really, as simple as that.

I have learnt to employ a simple thumb-rule: no matter who they are, anyone who I cannot relate to, does not form part of my ecosystem. Whether it is a co-worker, a family-member, a school-mate, a neighbor or vendor, the day I have stopped relating to a person, I just let them go. This is my way of preserving and nurturing positive energy – and inner peace – in me.

When you agonize over people’s behavior, and your unmet expectations of them, you are filling yourself with a lot of anxiety, stress and, possibly, negative energy. This negativity festers in you and makes you inefficient, irate and, believe me, very, very unhappy. The only way to fix this situation is to drop all expectations you have of people, and to simply walk away – or let them go – if you have stopped relating to them. The key to thrive, at work and in Life, is to keep relating, than obsess over the reporting or the relationship itself!

Suresh Krishna’s office reflects his state of mind – clean, calm and content. A large wall-sized window behind him that lights up the room naturally. And a clean, squeaky clean desk – there’s nothing on it. The man himself is as happy and content as he was when I had last met him 20 years ago. I ask him if there’s a secret to his being able to manage his Rs.3150 Crore company Sundram Fasteners, and his Life, so efficiently. “Oh! There’s no secret,” he says smiling and waving his hand as if to dismiss any suggestions of a feat being accomplished, and adds, “I just delegate very well. I love whatever I do and do whatever I love.”

Krishna makes it all sound so easy. Sundram Fasteners will be 50 years old in 2016. In all this time, there has been no labor unrest in the company, and it is unequivocally regarded as a torch-bearer for world-class quality in Indian industry. Krishna, 79, however does not count either of these measures as achievements. He says, “When I look back, I feel blessed that we have been able to raise the standard of living of our 20,000 employees and their families. Our quality focus, our value system of transparency, our work culture – all these are mere tools. What makes me really happy is that our people are leading wholesome lives.”

Suresh Krishna – Photo by Vaani Anand

Some people go do what they love doing. Some start off doing stuff to earn a living and then drop it to go do what they love. But Krishna’s someone who simply finds a way to love whatever he does. He says he has inherited his mother Ambujam Krishna’s genes; he showed great interest in music, painting and poetry as a child. He was naturally inclined to the arts and humanities. So, when he decided to drop his Master’s in chemical engineering after the second semester at the University of Wisconsin in the US and instead opted to study German literature there, his family was not surprised. “I enjoyed literature for its own sake. I had no ambitions to do anything with it,” he clarifies. When he came back to India, he was drafted into the family business and was invited to independently set up Sundram Fasteners. “I knew nothing about nuts and bolts. But I learned fast. As I gained experience, I realized that what I loved doing until then – literature, music, arts – and the process of building a company – what I was learning to do – both were means to spiritual enrichment. Whether it is listening to music or reviewing manufacturing, the resonance from both sides to me is the same. There has to be quality in both. And being qualitative, I discovered, is my inner joy, my idea of happiness,” says Krishna.

To Krishna’s credit, he does not even count on his work and Life philosophy as something unique. He states, with evident humility and gratitude, “I have been so lucky. There are so many blessings in my Life. I have never experienced poverty, never experienced ill health, I never had to live in a refugee camp or be homeless; and I live in Chennai, where I feel secure and don’t have to worry about a terrorist attack. It is because of all these blessings that that I have been able to focus on what I have done as a business leader.” He then leans forward and adds emphatically, “You know what? If we stop focusing on the trivial problems that confront us on a day-to-day basis and start counting our blessings, we will all be happy – instantaneously!”

Krishna says his father taught him, early on, the value of being content. “He used to tell me that you can’t wear two shirts or ride in two cars at the same time. Besides, he helped me realize that we are born with nothing and will go with nothing. So, it was through his perspectives that I learned not to take Life too seriously. I don’t work for more than 10 hours a day. In fact, no one can work efficiently if they work any longer – it doesn’t matter if you are leading a small Rs.10 Lakh business or a large Rs.10,000 Crore empire. To be happy, you must work smart.”

Leading people, setting, achieving and maintaining stringent world-class quality standards, building an institution – all these evidently contribute to Krishna’s happiness quotient. But his greatest asset is his understanding of his happiness. For instance, he creates time in his schedules to immerse himself in poetry because he loves the art of “putting words together”. He has recently completed a year-long exploration of the poetic, linguistic and spiritual nuances of the “Thiruppavai”. He has also written 50 poems in English but says he will never publish them: “I wrote them because I felt happy writing them. That happiness is deeply personal. It is matchless and priceless.”

It is this ability to go do all that which makes him happy that makes Krishna so successful, so happy and so content. This ability does not come with age alone, it comes from a deep understanding of the true nature of Life.

Disclaimer

Disclaimer 1: The author, AVIS, does not claim that he is the be-all, know-all and end-all of all that he shares based on experiences and learnings. AVIS has nothing against or for any religion. If the reader has a learning to share, most welcome. If the reader has a bone to pick or presents a view, which may affect the sentiments of other followers/readers, then this Page’s administrators may have to regrettably delete such a comment and even block such a follower. Disclaimer 2: No Thought expressed here is original though the experience of the learning shared may be unique. AVIS has little interest in either infringing upon or claiming copyright of any referenced material published on this Page. The images/videos used on this Page/Post, that are not created by AVIS, are purely for illustrative purposes. They belong to their original owners/creators. The author does not intend profiting from them nor is there any covert claim to copyright any of them.